How You Respond Says More Than What You Actually Say.

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As a society and as a civilization, we are overworked, overstimulated, overburdened, under capitalized, emotionally depressed and financially depleted. Everyone knows this. But these negative factors are taking away the precious element of empathy in our communications that helps to make our exchanges the most effective. Too much texting and too little talking is broadening the gap between the Baby Boomer crowd and the Millenials, and is creating a new 'relationship' paradigm that has us minimizing the significance of relationships in general. We're routinely De-personalizing, and becoming frighteningly mechanical as we advance. Maybe we suffer from "Machine envy."

If I telephone you, and you text me back in return, that may mean that you are busy and want to acknowledge that I have reached out to you, and that you'll call me later when things are less hectic. But if you never, ever phone me back, and I can only seem to get text messages from you in response to my telephone entreaties, my subconscious is going to invariably register this as disrespectful or unfriendly. If I don't view it as such, it means that my standards for exactly what constitutes a "relationship" have diminished with the times and the technology.

As a rule, the more in-touch (employing the greatest number of senses) we are with our counterpart, the stronger the bond and the deeper the trust that we are able to build. Without hearing a voice, seeing a face, savoring subtle non-verbal cues, and biochemistry (the pheromone effect that my parents used to simply ref to as "chemistry."

While not fully true, it is mostly true: How you respond (via text, phone, email, etc.) weighs just as heavily on the quality and effectiveness of your communication as the actual content of that communique.

The more of yourself that you give to a communication, the more effective, generally speaking you will be at conveying a message that will "get through" the rest of the noise associated with our overstimulated, multitasking society.

Do not underestimate the power of sending a stronger signal by touching more of the other person's senses.

Douglas E. Castle for The Sending Signals Blog